This invention relates to improving speed and ease of remote troubleshooting of problems with printing nodes and, more particularly, to methods and systems for facilitating remote access and customization of internally generated printing node status reports.
Many contemporary printing nodes, such as network-attached multifunction printers (MFPs), have an internal diagnostics feature that can test various hardware and software features of the printing node to determine status and output hard copies of printing node status reports containing status information on tested hardware and software features. These hard copies of printing node status reports are often transmitted by facsimile or scanned into electronic form and sent by email to remote technicians to isolate and troubleshoot problems with the printing node.
An example of such prior art printing node status report generation and remote transmission is illustrated in FIG. 1. A user wishing to resolve a problem with a printing node inputs a command on a user interface of the printing node, for example, the front panel, that prompts the printing node internal diagnostics feature to collect statistics 105, apply minimal formatting (e.g. text position) to the collected statistics 110, then convert the minimally formatted statistics into print data 115 represented in a page description language (PDL). The print data 120 are then rasterized 125 by internal raster image processing (RIP) to convert the print data 120 into print engine-ready data 130. The print engine-ready data 130 are then processed 135 by an internal print engine and the printing node outputs a local hard copy 140 of a printing node status report. The user manually carries the local hard copy 140 of the status report to a local fax machine 145 that transmits the status report to a remote fax machine 150, which outputs a remote hard copy 155 of the status report for review by a technician for problem isolation and troubleshooting.
The utility of the above approach is limited by the requirement of manual intervention by the user to initiate the status report from a user interface of the printing node, retrieve the local hard copy 140 of the status report from the printing node and fax (or scan and email) the local hard copy 140 of the status report to the technician. This consumes the users valuable time and requires that the user have a fax-capable printing node or ready access to a fax machine.
The utility of the above approach is further limited in that the technician is forced to view the printer status report in a style predetermined by the printing node.